1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a welding helmet having a cartridge coupling structure, and more particularly, to a welding helmet having a cartridge coupling structure, which can prevent fumes generated during welding or cutting from directly entering the welding helmet, in addition to protecting the wearer's face from intense light generated during welding or cutting, and can permit convenient exchange of a cartridge through easy attachment/detachment thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, arc welding is a technique to bond two metal pieces by locally heating and melting them using fusibility of metals. During welding, welders should wear welding helmets to protect their face from high heat, intense light and harmful gas generated during welding.
Conventionally, such welding helmets have been designed to have a handle piece for the manual operation thereof. However, this kind of welding helmet is troublesome in use since welders have to repeatedly put on the welding helmet whenever they perform welding.
As a result of continuous research and development for improving working efficiency of the welders, currently, welding helmets of the type using a band are commercialized.
The welding helmets, serving as protective equipment for use in welding or cutting, especially, have an anti-dazzling device (hereinafter, referred to as a cartridge) for protecting the welder's eyes from intense light caused by sparks discharged during welding or cutting. Such a cartridge is fixedly mounted to the welding helmets, and acts to intercept light having a wavelength more than 780nm and less than 365nm and control transmission of visible radiation, thereby allowing the welders to clearly see their work without a dazzling phenomenon during welding.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,533,206 discloses a welding helmet in which an easily removable electronic quick change (EQC) cartridge is retained in an integral cartridge housing. The EQC cartridge includes a liquid crystal display (LCD) lens, solar cells and photo sensor cells on its front side. The EQC cartridge is positioned on the front side of the welding helmet so that the LCD lens is positioned directly in front of the welder's eyes, thereby functioning as the actual viewing window. The solar cells absorb light and function as an energy input. The photo sensor cells detect sparks and other intense light and act as an input to a circuit that automatically adjusts the LCD lens to a variable opaque condition.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,070,264 discloses a welding helmet, which comprises a shutter through which a wearer of the helmet may view a welding operation, an electronic control associated with the shutter for controlling a light transmission shade of the shutter, a light sensor provided in the electronic control for sensing light emanating from the welding operation, and an electronic circuit provided in the electronic control for driving the shutter to a darker shade in response to the light sensor sensing brighter light from the welding operation.
However, the above-described conventional welding helmets have a problem in that their cartridges, which are used to detect intensity of light generated during welding and automatically drive the LCD lens or shutter to a darker shade according to the intensity of light so as to protect the welder's eyes, are impossible or difficult to remove from the welding helmets.
Another problem of the conventional welding helmets configured as stated above is that they have a fine gap at a coupling region between a helmet body and a cover member, thereby being incapable of preventing sparks and fumes generated during welding from entering the helmet body, resulting in a deterioration in the working efficiency of the welder.